DARRELL NORMAN: Better days in the life of a jumbo jet

One of the last times I was on an airplane I wore a coat and tie. All the other passengers were well dressed, too. That was before people starting flying in cut-off T-shirts and shower shoes.

By Darrell NormanTimes Columnist

One of the last times I was on an airplane I wore a coat and tie. All the other passengers were well dressed, too. That was before people starting flying in cut-off T-shirts and shower shoes.On second thought, perhaps air passengers had started dressing that way (it was the 1970s), but I had not been exposed to such impropriety.I was used to wearing a coat and tie every day and would have never thought of boarding an international flight on a Boeing 747 dressed liked a beach bum.I remembered that flight today when I read the huge 747 — six stories high with room for more than 500 passengers — is giving way to smaller aircraft with fewer seats and fewer engines.Once the epitome of luxury in the air, the first jumbo jet is now too expensive for airlines to operate. It burns too much fuel and carries too few passengers. Boeing now has new 747s in storage, waiting for foreign buyers.A photograph that accompanies the news story is in black and white and shows passengers dressed in hats and gloves to board a 747 in its glory days. They could have been boarding the Queen Mary.My only flight on a 747 ended at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., but I do not remember where it originated — perhaps Copenhagen, Denmark, or Frankfurt, Germany.We — my wife of that time, our daughter, two white cats named Kasha and Snowball and I — were returning from an assignment at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.Pan Am had flights out of Moscow, but probably not a non-stop to D.C., so I think we changed planes in Europe. I remember leaving Sheremetyevo and landing at Dulles, but my memory of any stop en route has faded.After a night or two in a D.C. hotel, where we ate Thanksgiving dinner, we stayed with old friends in Virginia while I debriefed at the Pentagon.When I was cleared to go, I took the Metro that runs through the Pentagon to National Airport (It had not acquired that other name) to pick up a rental car — a brand-new 1978 Chevy Impala.The Impala introduced me to variable-speed windshield wipers and cruise control. I tried them both on the long drive to Alabama. The wipers were no trouble, but I soon got enough of cruise control.I had read about the futuristic gadget and had the mistaken idea that a tap on the accelerator would cancel it. Imagine my panic when my toe on the gas pedal had the opposite effect. I finally got the autopilot off and did not touch it again.Except for a flight the next year from Denver to Texas and another to D.C., I was never on an airplane again. My parents had started flying late in life and would make trips to California, Colorado and Germany. As for me, I gave up air travel and learned how to shut off cruise control.The only time I have been to an airport in recent years was to take somebody or fetch somebody. My memory of flying (except for 6,000 hours on Air Force recons) is of the finer days, mixed somewhat with the memory of traveling cross country on passenger trains.I remember being treated with courtesy and served both food and drink by pretty stewardesses. Back then, they were all pretty and it was all right to call them stewardesses. Passengers wore their best and packed their shorts.Having heard of the horrors of modern air travel, I am happy to go where I need to go (most often to buy groceries or see a doctor) by car.I have turned the delights of air travel over to my daughter and her family. She probably has not flown a 747 since I have, unless it was on her high school trip to Europe, but she flies often.Her eldest son is a freshman football player at Louisiana Tech and she and her husband, usually with the two younger sons, are in the stands for every game. That means flying — to Texas, Kansas, North Carolina, New Mexico and Florida so far.They are veteran fliers and they dress for comfort. If you want to see anybody getting off a plane wearing a coat and tie, you will have to wait for the team to land.

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